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Smartphone

A smartphone is a mobile phone built on a mobile operating system, with more advanced computing capability and connectivity than a feature phone.

The first smartphones combined the functions of a personal digital assistant (PDA) with a mobile phone. Later models added the functionality of portable media players, low-end compact digital cameras, pocket video cameras, and GPS navigation units to form one multi-use device. Modern smartphones also include high-resolution touchscreens and web browsers that display standard web pages as well as mobile-optimized sites. High-speed data access is provided by Wi-Fi and Mobile Broadband.

The most common mobile operating systems (OS) used by modern smartphones include Google's Android, Apple's iOS, Nokia's Symbian, RIM's BlackBerry OS, Samsung's Bada, Microsoft's Windows Phone, Hewlett-Packard's webOS, and embedded Linux distributions such as Maemo and MeeGo. Such operating systems can be installed on many different phone models, and typically...

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QR Codes can be handy things: Scan a funky black-and-white design in the real world to access electronic information. But a German sportswear catalog has taken the marriage of physical and digital a step farther by adding an interesting twist to shop...

BARCELONA: Spend enough time at Mobile World Congress and soon you find that you can’t tell one gray slab, big-screen smart phone from the next. The screen sizes vary a bit, and some have smooth backs, while others offer ridges, but most of the handh...

Zmags launched an online shopping environment on Tuesday, aiming to blend the physical store experience with that of flipping through a magazine or catalog. The media merchandising company has created a beautiful platform for merchants called Zmags C...

There's a trend in smartphones, and some might call it disturbing. Hand-in-hand with the recent surge of phones with gigantic screens comes a surprise visitor, poking its way out of the technological past to stab at us here in the present: the stylus...

BARCELONA -- Intel continues its steady march into the smartphone market with new international partners in Europe, India and China. The company announced new Intel Atom-based handsets with European provider Orange, India's upstart provider Lava Inte...

Groupon announced at the 2012 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday that it experienced a record-breaking month in December among mobile app users, as one quarter of all Groupon vouchers were purchased via a mobile device. The deal-of-the-day ...

BARCELONA -- There are two big electronics companies in South Korea: Samsung and LG. Interestingly, both are now gravitating toward stylus-friendly smartphones and tablets. Samsung has its Notes and now LG has the new, over-sized Optimus Vu. The LG O...

BARCELONA -- Nokia wove a convincing story this morning of success for the still-young and well-behind-the-competition Windows Phone platform, but it was one brief product mention that could be the best augur of future success: The arrival of Skype f...

BARCELONA -- Although HTC CEO Peter Chou said the company's new strategy is to offer customers one device that has it all, HTC actually launched three devices from the HTC One range, with HTC One X being the flagship phone. I had a chance to play a b...

BARCELONA -- We didn't get a new flagship Lumia from Nokia at the Mobile World Congress today, but we did get a low-end model: the Lumia 610. With only 256 MB of RAM, it's definitely the least powerful Lumia we've seen so far. However, Nokia claims t...

BARCELONA -- HTC has launched a new flagship Android smartphone, the HTC One X, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The majority of mobile giants had their announcements before the actual start of the MWC - including Samsung, LG and Sony. HTC ...

As expected, Sony unveiled its Xperia P and Xperia U dual-core smartphones at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona on Sunday. It was the first press conference for Sony since it spun off Ericsson, with Sony's smartphones now originating from a di...

BARCELONA -- A projector jammed inside a smartphone may seem awkward or crazy to some -- and it's not a new idea -- but the Samsung Galaxy Beam may be the most elegant execution of the mash-up yet. The concept is simple: take a full-powered 4-inch Ga...

BARCELONA -- The Mobile World Congress hasn't even officially kicked off yet, and Samsung is already on fire, announcing devices left and right. After the 10.1-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, next in line is a smartphone/mobile projector combo called Sams...

Trust: an essential quality for a good friend, especially if you're sharing a private photo album with them via new app Popset. The app launched late last week in the App store. It allows users at the same event to share photos and even mark certain ...

Paris Hilton has a thing or two to say about drunk texts, sexting and Twitter. A video by the pop heiress has recently surfaced for a song called "Drunk Text" and... it's quite strange. Somehow, it's mesmerizing too. The song, which is more spoken wo...

LG is gearing up to unveil a new line of smartphones that will be focused on sleek design. The company will be revealing three smartphones under a new line called L-Style next week at the 2012 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The Android-powered d...

T-Mobile USA announced on Thursday that it will be begin a major network transformation with the launch of a high-speed LTE network in 2013. CEO and President Philipp Humm said the company will invest this year in strategic initiatives to get the bus...

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories. President Obama Unveils Privacy Bill of Rights P...

How "green" is your smartphone? AT&T's new program will rate the environmental impact of devices in its portfolio. The Eco-Rating program will launch later this year, and the rating will be noted on the packaging of each AT&T device. In a YouTube vid...

ABC’s behind-the-scenes look at Apple's supply plant in Shenzhen and Chengdu confirmed a lot of what we already knew: Conditions are grueling, employees are overworked and underpaid, and living quarters are crowded. However, some of the stats reveale...

If you know the panicked and disconnected feeling of leaving your mobile phone at home, you might be one of the many suffering from nomophobia. A recent survey by U.K.-based mobile security service provider SecurEnvoy conducted among 1,000 people fou...

When a twentysomething's budget is tight, her smartphone is far from the first expense to go, suggests a new study from Nielsen. The survey of 20,000 U.S. mobile customers found that smartphone ownership skews toward the young and the wealthy -- exac...

Panasonic gave its new smartphone for Europe a name on Monday. "The Eluga," which will be the first Panasonic phone to debut outside of Japan since 2005, is set to go on sale this March. The Japanese manufacturer had announced its intentions to re-en...

In the dreamworld of a Super Bowl commercial, the Samsung Galaxy Note isn't just a hot new phone -- it's pure gadget ambrosia, inspiring legions of everyday people to abandon their iPhones for the Note's extra-large screen, speedy 4G LTE connection a...

"We've all had that feeling coming about, staring at the wall and nothing comes out," raps musician Paul The Trombonist in his latest YouTube music video. The song's subject matter is something Mashable's digitally minded readers can relate to, and s...

Both iPhones and Android devices unlock in the same way: with the user sliding his or her finger along part of the screen. That simple function has prompted a huge amount of legal wrangling, with both Apple and Google (by proxy of its recent acquisit...

Igor Faletski is the CEO of Mobify, a web platform that optimizes ecommerce and publishing sites for mobile and powers more than 20,000 sites. Remember when it took 23 clicks to find movie showtimes on your mobile phone? While that may seem like an e...

As Waldo and the Care Bears celebrate big anniversaries this year -- 25 and 30 years, respectively -- it's mind-blowing how much the toy industry has changed in the past few decades. Nowadays, Barbie takes pictures via a built-in webcam and displays ...

A prediction for the future of smartphone growth makes some bold projections: By the end of this year, there could be more smartphones on the planet than humans, and by 2016 there could be 10 billion smartphones. That's 1.4 mobile devices per capita....

Samsung is excited to bring its Galaxy Note "superphone" to the U.S. It's so excited that it's giving Mashable a sneak peek of the phone before it becomes available to AT&T customers Feb. 19. We took a few pictures when we unboxed the phone, and we c...

The HTC Edge we've seen leaked in November of last year was renamed to HTC Endeavour, as reports indicate. It is expected to be a flagship Android phone with the nVidia Tegra 3 quad-core chip at its core. A leaked HTC Endeavour ROM has been posted on...

When Saturday Night Live decides to make fun of Verizon, there's something deeply satisfying about it. See if you agree when you watch this skit that aired Saturday night on SNL, poking fun at the alphabet soup and numerical nightmare that you'll fin...

It was a week of superlatives, where we found unique smartphones of the present and future, a new candidate for the world's tallest building, an ambitious deep space outpost and a iPhone dock/boombox that knocked our socks off. SEE ALSO: Previous edi...

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